Site Update 03-02-2012: Advance Entity Feed and User Mentions

Hello Game Effectionados!

We here at TGE hope you are all having an awesome 2012 thus far and enjoying what has already been an exciting year for gaming. We're a little behind schedule, but we're announcing several new features today in response to some of your long standing requests. So with that said, here's what you'll find in this update:

• Ability to reference other users in Comments with the @<username> syntax.
• Ability to reference games, movies, and TV shows in Comments with the @<itemName> syntax.
• Each game, movie, and TV show page will now feature a feed based on what is being said about that item. Hitman: Absolution has an example of this.
• You will receive a notification now when someone comments on an article that you've written.
• A few design changes to create a bit more consistency throughout the site (comment box, article title header, and a few other minor changes).
• We've joined the Zerg Network to help generate some traffic for our site. This is something we typically wouldn't do, but the ZergNet founder has been extremely helpful in giving us advice and educating us more about the industry, and as such we're very excited to be a part of what he's created. You'll find articles from around the web at the bottom of each of our articles; those are the ones coming from ZergNet. We'd love to know what you think about this, and how you feel about the ZergNet hub in general.

In the next few months we're going to be putting a bigger focus on content (as opposed to new features, though we'll still be working on some of those as well). You will find several new recurring article features hitting on a regular basis henceforth:

• Weekend Warrior: A piece that gives some insight into our editors gaming lineup for the weekend. We'll list what we plan to play in hopes of personalizing the site a bit more, and giving you a stronger connection with our writers. Feel free to leave your weekend gaming plans in the comments section!
• Friday Fives: Each Friday we will be releasing a list article (such as the one from today). We're excited to do this as it should help bring traffic to the site, and these sorts of articles are typically fun to write as well.
• The Indie Effect: This is a series that we've already published a few times, and one that we're very excited to offer. Essentially, we are hoping to give more attention to the "little guys" out there, who create awesome gaming experiences, but don't always get the recognition they deserve.
• Unsung Heroes: Along those same lines, this series will focus on highlighting individuals in the industry, who may not always be at the forefront of game development, but nonetheless have a strong hand in making a release successful. This series has also seen a few releases already.
• After the Hype: Here we will be taking a look at games of the past and doing a sort of retro-review for them. The idea is to give these games a thorough look and evaluate them outside of their release window such that the hype and media blitz have passed.
• More TV show coverage in general, focusing largely on HBO series for the time being. Kaili Markley has been doing an awesome job keeping this going lately!

Aside from that, we'll be preparing for PAXEast next month and all that goes along with that. As always, please leave us your feedback and impressions of the items above, and anything that you would like to see in the future.

Happy gaming!